With the Alexander Isak transfer storm still raging, Monday's Premier League match between host Newcastle United and defending champion Liverpool was always going to be full of intensity and drama. Despite Liverpool's main crime being that the club is interested in a very good player, the Reds came into St. James' Park as the invading force, and the Magpie fans treated them as such, elevating the atmosphere from a simple early season Prem match into something more volatile and raucous. Unfortunately, whether due to the crowd or the transfer issues or just because they were hosting the champs, Newcastle's players were pumped and jacked to dangerous levels, which made Monday's match less a sporting event and more of a pie fight. Fortunately, even some ugly vibes and questionable tackles couldn't hamper what was the best match of the season so far.
Let's start with the positives for Newcastle. The Magpies came out riding that wave of emotion on home ground, and were all over Liverpool for most of the first half. Though Liverpool (barely) had more possession (52-48 percent), Newcastle had almost all of the chances and certainly all of the momentum. Playing without Isak, Anthony Gordon was deputized as the nominal striker in Eddie Howe's 4-3-3 formation, and the former Everton lad brought some of the Merseyside Derby's passion to Monday's match. By constantly driving into the Liverpool backline, Gordon forced either Virgil van Dijk or Ibrahima Konaté to move up and close him down, opening up space for passes to Harvey Barnes and Anthony Elanga. When the Liverpool center backs didn't do that, Gordon shot, and shot often: For the first half he had three shots, though only one on target.
Gordon notched zero shots in the second 45, though, and that's because he lost his goddamn mind shortly before halftime. After van Dijk received the ball in his own third, Gordon accelerated from a mile away like a heat-seeking missile and clattered into van Dijk with a ridiculous tackle, leaving cleat marks on the Dutchman's calf:
On the field, Gordon earned himself a yellow card, which was then promptly upgraded to a red after a VAR review. At full speed, Gordon's tackle looked like a red, but on replay, there was no way he was avoiding the sending off, despite Howe saying after the match that it was an "unfortunate" decision:
Combine that red card with Ryan Gravenberch's 35th-minute goal from outside the box, deflected though it was, and it looked like Liverpool would be in control for the second half. That feeling didn't exactly go away at the start of the second 45, as new signing Hugo Ekitike once again found the scoresheet mere seconds after the break: After muscling a run near the box, Ekitike received the ball and first-timed a near post laser past Nick Pope in Newcastle's goal, doubling Liverpool's lead before manager Arne Slot had even made it back to the bench:
Here's the thing about a rowdy crowd and a home club that absolutely wanted to win this game, though: There was simply no quit in Newcastle, even down two goals and a man. Perhaps taking inspiration from Bournemouth in matchday one—the Cherries went down 2-0 as well before Antoine Semenyo evened it up with two goals in 12 minutes—Newcastle decided that it would simply barrage the Liverpool defense, the weakest and most rebuilt part of the side. It was especially patchwork on Monday, as normal midfielder Dominik Szoboszlai was forced to cover at right back due to a hamstring injury to Jeremie Frimpong.
Though Szoboszlai acquitted himself well enough in defense—and his offensive contributions earned him, at least, my personal Man of the Match award—Milos Kerkez was terrorized down the left of defense by Elanga, who repeatedly burned him with dribbles and runs. As if that weren't enough, Kerkez was at least in part to blame for Newcastle's opener: After a throw-in in the 57th minute was cleared dangerously just outside the box, a second ball into the box, from the foot of Tino Livramento, found Bruno Guimarães soaring and bodying Kerkez. It's almost embarrassing how badly Kerkez was out-muscled by the Newcastle captain, whose perfectly placed header over the new Liverpool left back left no doubt:
Then there was Konaté, who had perhaps his worst game as a Liverpool player on Monday, after what might end up being his second worst game as a Liverpool player against Bournemouth. Konaté is a great defender on his day, but he seems off this season, and his movement is almost as bad as his reading of the game. Both of those things combined to give up the equalizer in the 88th minute: Pope hit a deep goal kick that looked to be clearable by the French center back, but he appeared to completely misread it in flight and didn't jump at all, letting the ball hit off his back and into the path of William Osula, who knotted the score at two after racing past Gravenberch:
Frankly, despite going down 2-0 and losing Gordon, Newcastle at the very least deserved the point, and maybe also the full three for a win. The attack constantly pushed Liverpool back, forcing the champs to spend almost the entire second half defending as if it were the 93rd minute of a Champions League semifinal. That constant pressure completely nullified the Liverpool attack, which failed to even shoot once between minutes 46 and 100. It was a truly pathetic showing for Liverpool, the kind that simply can't happen in the tight and congested upper echelons of the Premier League table. It was also, in its own way, the perfect set-up for what happened in the 99th minute.
Let's back up four minutes first: In the fifth minute of a total of 11 in stoppage time, Slot subbed Harvey Elliott for Curtis Jones (OK, sure, whatever) and Rio Ngumoha for Cody Gakpo. The 16-year-old winger was brought on for his Premier League debut in an almost impossible position: With Newcastle's press and intensity, it was more likely than not that Ngumoha would succumb to this big and difficult stage. And yet, just as Federico Chiesa scored the most unlikely of winners against Bournemouth, so did Ngumoha announce his entrance with a winner of his own: In the aforementioned 99th minute, Liverpool was finally able to release some pressure and push Newcastle back into its own half as time ticked away.
Chiesa found the ball at his feet just outside the box, but instead of looking to score himself, he spotted Mohamed Salah, quiet until he wasn't on Monday, and dumped off the pass. Salah looked across the box and spotted two very important situations unfolding: Szoboszlai had dragged Livramento with him to the penalty spot, while Ngumoha was making a run into the empty space behind the Newcastle right back. Salah hit a cutback across the box, and Szoboszlai, knowing exactly where his teenaged teammate was, hit a beautiful dummy that further took Livramento out of the play and put Pope on the wrong foot. That was all Ngumoha needed to wrap his foot around the ball and hit a gorgeous curler into the far side netting, scoring on his debut and giving Liverpool a win it perhaps didn't deserve:
I have to say, as good of a team goal as this was for Liverpool, it's tricky to say whether it works the same way if Newcastle has one more player out there; the Reds did a wonderful job of spreading the defense and forcing them to Salah's side of the field, but that goal was at least nine percent more doable due to Newcastle's disadvantage.
Though there was one more minor scuffle after the goal—a couple of players did some shoving, it's fine, no one really had their heart in that—that was as far as the action would go on Monday, and damn if the first (and perhaps only) Alexander Isak Clásico didn't deliver. Liverpool will both be ecstatic with the three points and potentially terrified of what this poor defense might face as Arsenal comes to Anfield on Sunday. The Reds also might see their forward line depth and redouble the efforts to get Isak; Ngumoha's goal was fantastic, but I don't think Slot wants to rely on Chiesa and a teenager to save his side's ass every week. As for Newcastle, gah! This game was for the taking, and the fact that the hosts lost in this fashion will sting more than a blowout might have. One can always play "What if?" with sports games, but I find it hard to believe that this Liverpool defense would have contained Isak for 100 minutes. Similarly, how would this have gone if Gordon hadn't made such a costly error of judgement? Even with how well Newcastle played down a man, that's not easy, and the winning goal showed how difficult it is to keep a side out with a numerical disadvantage.
